


Turning Point

by my_mad_fatuation



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:02:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7161572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_mad_fatuation/pseuds/my_mad_fatuation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn is a zombie who meets the very living Rae and one thing leads to another…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Point

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the film Warm Bodies.

The thing I think most people don’t get about the undead is that we’re not that different from the living. There’s this common misconception that we are cold and unfeeling—and maybe in a literal sense we are—but we can have _emotions_. Just because my heart doesn’t physically work anymore doesn’t make me heartless. I can feel joy and sadness and anger just like anyone else. I’m just not that great at expressing it. (But that may be because I’m a guy.)  
The media tend to portray us as brainless, though, which is ridiculous; I eat brains for breakfast, for crying out loud. I’m not stupid. Okay, so I doubt I was ever the smartest kid in school, and I often have trouble putting my thoughts into words, but I can still be clever from time to time.  
And I have friends. My best mate, they call him Archie—well, by “best mate” I mean we occasionally groan and stare awkwardly at each other—I see him everyday. I see this other fella, Chop, most days as well, and he’s always good for a laugh. (I say “laugh,” but I mean more of a wheezy growl, of course.)  
The three of us often like to go out and grab a bite together, just hang out as lads, you know. We like to go down to Ward Seven for our meals because we can feel a little less guilty about it.  
Ward Seven is where the living put all their murderers and just, like, evil people—it’s sort of a peace offering to us. It’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship, I suppose. We get a meal and they get rid of violent criminals.  
It’s not perfect, of course, and before The Turn, most of these people would just have faced life imprisonment, not _death_. (And certainly would not have been eaten to death.) But things change—priorities change. The living are mostly concerned with staying alive, and if that means sacrificing a few scumbags, so be it.  
Do I feel great about it? No, of course not. I wish I didn’t have this need to eat human flesh and organs and brains—oh my god, brains. (You know how they say chocolate is better than sex for women? Well brains are better than sex for the undead.) (Not that we can do that, what with the lack of blood-flow and other bodily fluids.) (But that’s a whole other can of worms.)  
So, as I was saying, I wish I didn’t have this insatiable urge to feast on the living, but as long as I do, I may as well contain it as best I can. I’d rather eat murderers than innocents, wouldn’t you?  
Not everyone thinks like me, though. There are some who prefer the innocents. They’re the ones who hang around outside Ward Four in case any living folks decide to take a walk beyond The Wall—and, for some reason, there’s always somebody who does. Daredevils, I suppose.  
Then there are those volunteers in Ward Two who come beyond The Wall to try and feed us raw beef and stuff, as if that’s the same. They don’t get it, but they’re trying. They believe that some day they’ll find a cure for whatever makes us the way we are and we’ll be human again. I’m not so sure I believe that, but it’s a nice thought.  
I like to go down to Ward Two sometimes just to see them. I’ll take their beef to be nice, and then chuck it later. It’s just nice to get some human contact, you know?  
Well, it’s not quite human contact. They are surrounded by heavily armed guards and if we come within five meters of them we’ll be shot in the head. But I can sometimes hear them talking, which I enjoy. It’s a good way to refresh me on verbal language, since I rarely use it in my day-to-day life.  
I’ve gotten to know some of the regulars fairly well. They call me Finn, apparently because I look the most quote-unquote _human_ of us. (Finn the Human was apparently a cartoon character that I don’t remember.)  
I don’t know what exactly makes me look more human—maybe it’s that I haven’t been here that long so the decay hasn’t set in as much. In any case, I take it as a compliment.  
As for the regulars who come to bring us “food,” Chop seems to have a fondness for one in particular, a red-haired girl named Izzy. She’s cute and sweet and isn’t afraid to get close enough to talk to us (with her armed guard at her side).  
Today, however, there were two girls with her I’d never seen before. Both of them were quite pretty, which, yeah, I still notice. (I’m still a guy.) The one with the light brown or dirty blonde hair—it was hard to tell in this light—seemed to be disgusted by everything she saw, but the tall one with dark hair just seemed fascinated. I suspect she’d never seen the undead up close before.  
“Hey, fellas,” Izzy said as they approached slowly. “I’d like you to meet my friends. This is Chloe”—the disgusted one—“and Rae,”—the fascinated one. She turned to the girls. “This is Archie, Chop, and Finn,” she said to them, gesturing to each of us in turn.  
“Hunnnnh,” I grunted.  
Rae laughed a little, and if I still had any blood-flow in my body I probably would have reddened out of embarrassment. (It’s not my fault I’m so bad at talking to girls!)  
“Y’alright?” she said to us.  
I cocked my head slightly and nodded.  
“We’ve brought you boys a treat,” said Izzy, pulling out a freezer bag of raw meat from her backpack.  
She tossed it over to me and I forced a smile. “Ch-cheeeeers.”  
“Oh my god, it can talk,” said Chloe, staggering back a little.  
“He’s a he, not an it,” said Rae. She turned to Izzy. “Right?”  
“Yeah,” said Izzy. “I mean, I think so. I assume you keep your sex when you turn, but I don’t know for sure…”  
“God, Izzy, don’t make me think about zombie willies!” complained Chloe. “That’s disgusting.”  
“You’re the one whose mind went there, Chlo,” said Rae with a laugh.  
I wheezed a laugh as well. I couldn’t help it. Rae’s laughter was infectious. The girls all looked at me and I stopped.  
“Are you laughing at me right now?” Chloe asked me.  
I shrugged nervously.  
She threw her hands in the air. “This is so much weirder than what I thought it would be.”  
“How come?” said Rae.  
“I didn’t expect you’d be joking with them! I thought they’d just sort of stand there and take the meat we brought ‘em and then leave. Or they’d try to attack and we’d shoot ‘em in the head.” She pointed her finger at Archie like a gun and mimed shooting him. “Either way, this was not what I had in mind.”  
“This is what I was trying to show ya,” said Izzy. “They aren’t so different from us, really.”  
“Yeah, except they eat people,” said Chloe. “And they’re dead.”  
“Undead,” Rae corrected her.  
“Whatever, they’re not like us, alright?”  
I looked down at the ground, ashamed. It’s not like I want to eat people. Okay, that’s not true. But it’s not like I want to want to eat people, though. It just happened to me, somehow.  
I wish that I could be living, that I could be normal. Then I wouldn’t have to feel so conflicted. The living have it so easy.  
An alarm sounded which meant they were opening The Wall soon to let the living back in. The rest of us had to clear out immediately; any undead in the area when The Wall was opening would be shot in the head on sight. Didn’t matter if we were the good, murderer-eating type.  
“Alright, see you in a few days, boys,” said Izzy.  
I lifted the bag of meat in my hand as if to say, “Thanks again,” and we turned to walk away.  
“See yous later, then,” Rae called after us.  
I looked back at her and she waved. I raised my hand clumsily and tried to wave in return. I wasn’t watching where I was going and nearly smacked into Archie.  
“Heeeeyyyy!” he groaned.  
“Sozzz,” I replied. I glanced back at the girls one more time and kept going. “Girrrls…. Nnnice…"  
He shrugged.  
***  
Sometimes being undead is really boring. Especially at night. It’s dark and we have no electricity and we don’t even sleep. At least sleeping would give us something to do. I usually spend my nights just sitting in the dark, thinking.  
Tonight I thought about those girls that came to see us, particularly Rae. She was just so different from any of the living I had met. She wasn’t scared or disgusted by us like Chloe, but she was snider than Izzy, which I enjoyed. Plus, she had a really big…uh, personality…that wasn’t too bad either.  
I imagined what it would be like to touch her, to feel her warm skin. She looked so soft and delicious—wait, not like that. I don’t want to eat her. I mean, I sort of do, because she is flesh and blood after all, but no I would never. Besides, I had a different kind of hunger for her, I could tell. The kind that made me wish my heart still pumped blood through my body.  
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this way. Probably before I turned, I suppose. I can’t remember much before I turned. I think I had a girlfriend then and as I vaguely recall she may have been blonde, but I feel as though I didn’t really like her all that much. At least, I can’t remember why I did, if I did.  
I wasn’t really sure why Rae interested me so much, though. There were girls everywhere, girls I could actually approach without getting shot. Sure, most of them were covered in other people’s blood and some of them were starting to rot, but it’s not like living girls were lining up to date the undead.  
But I couldn’t stop thinking about her all night. And all day. And the next day. And the next day.  
I checked my watch around 10:42 A.M. The Wall would be opening soon, and the girls would be back with more fucking meat. Well, Izzy would be there at least. I doubted that Chloe would be back, and merely hoped that Rae would.  
I found Chop and Archie and we headed towards Ward Two, making sure to keep our distance while The Wall was opening. I watched eagerly as the volunteers and their unenthused guards filed out, until—yes!—I spotted her.  
I tried to keep the grin off my face but Archie still looked at me quizzically.  
“Wha’?” I grumbled, giving him a shrug.  
The alarm ended which meant The Wall was now closed and we could approach. There was a line on the ground marking how close we could get before they would shoot, so we walked up to it, towards Izzy and Rae.  
“Hey, guys,” said Izzy. “You remember Rae, don’t ya?”  
I nodded but tried not to seem too eager.  
“I brought you something,” Rae said to me.  
Wait, for me? She brought something just for me?  
She pulled a small silver rectangle with dangly bits out of her pocket. “Here,” she said, holding it out to me.  
“He’s not allowed to cross the line,” said Izzy, motioning towards the ground at my feet.  
“Oh,” said Rae, pulling her hand back in. “Am I allowed to cross?”  
“I mean, I guess…”  
Rae took a couple steps towards me and her guard pointed his weapon at my head. She stopped at looked at him. “I think I’ll be fine.”  
She took several more steps towards me until she was standing an arm’s length away. She held out the rectangle again. “I thought you might like this.”  
I took it and held it up to examine it. It was so shiny and had buttons on it.  
“I noticed your Arctic Monkeys t-shirt last time,” she added, pointing at my shirt. “I thought maybe you’d want some music to listen to, since you lot don’t have electricity out here, do ya?”  
I looked at her curiously. Did this rectangle make music? Was it an instrument? It looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t recall what it was.  
“I figure when it runs outta juice, just bring it back to me and I’ll charge it for ya.”  
I took another look at it and pushed one of the buttons. I could hear a sound coming from somewhere but I couldn’t tell where.  
“You put the buds in your ears first,” she said. “May I?” She picked up one of the dangly bits and lifted it to my ear.  
I could hear the music get louder as she stuck it in. It was…interesting.  
“Good, yeah?” she said, and I nodded.  
She stepped back in line with Izzy and the guard, and Izzy tossed over a bag of meat to Chop, who seemed pleased enough to catch it. Luckily there were some stray dogs ‘round where we stayed who would eat it later.  
The alarm sounded and we trudged back, though I still had the thingy in my ear so I enjoyed a nice soundtrack for my walk home.  
I listened to the music from the silver rectangle all night and into the next day, when it stopped working just as it was getting dark again. I suppose that’s what she meant by “runs outta juice.” I would have to wait until she came back to return it to her, which would be a couple of days, and then wait for her to charge it and bring it back, in another couple of days. Maybe I should have spaced out my enjoyment of it rather than listening for over twenty-seven hours straight.  
But I was so excited to see Rae on the next visiting day. She approached me again so I could return the music device to her.  
“What’d’ya think?” she asked.  
I nodded stiffly. “Greaaat,” I growled.  
She smiled and snickered a little. “I’ll get it back to ya for next time.” She wound the dangly bits around the rectangle and shoved it in her pocket. “So, I was curious; where do you live?”  
I tilted my head and furrowed my brow, confused.  
“Okay, maybe ‘live’ was a bad choice of words,” she added quickly. “But you know what I mean. Do you have a house or what?”  
I shook my head slowly. “C-cara…van.”  
“You live in a caravan?”  
Nod.  
“That is so cool. Can I see it?”  
“Rae, don’t be daft,” said Izzy, apparently listening in to our conversation.  
“Why can’t I go?”  
“You can’t just go wanderin’ off in the undead areas, now, can ya?” she said. “The guards are only hired to protect us within this space.”  
“Yeah, well I’ve got this,” said Rae, pulling out a gun from behind her back. I flinched unintentionally. “Plus, these guys seem alright.” She turned back to face us. “Aren’t ya?”  
“But there’s more of them out there, yeah? Dangerous ones.”  
“I just want to see what conditions they live in, is all. That’s why we’re here, to try and improve their lives, isn’t it?” She smiled at me and put a hand on my shoulder, holding up her gun with the other.  
I bowed under the weight of her arm, not used to having someone else touch me.  
“You coming?” she said to Izzy.  
Her friend stared back at her incredulously. “You’re joking.”  
“No.” Rae turned back to me. “It’s not far, is it?”  
I shook my head again.  
“And you’re not going to eat me, are you?”  
“Uh-uh,” I grunted.  
She smiled. “It would probably take all three of ya to eat me anyway, and I’d have shot at least one of yous by the time ya tried.” She shook me by the shoulder and let go.  
“You’re mad,” said Izzy.  
Rae shot her a dirty look.  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”  
She faced the other lads. “Why don’t the two of you stay here with Izzy and the arms, and he’ll show me around, then?”  
They shrugged.  
“Perfect.”  
“The Wall opens in fifteen minutes, Rae!”  
“I’ll be back by then, don’t worry.” She hooked her arm around mine and I felt all tingly on my right side. “Let’s go, buddy.”  
(Buddy? That’s not a good sign, when someone you are interested in calls you “buddy,” is it?)  
“F-Finnn,” I told her.  
“Sorry. Finn.” She squeezed my arm quickly and let go.  
“I…keep…yooou…s-safe,” I muttered, looking at the gun in her other hand.  
“I’m sure you will, Finn, but I never go off with a strange guy without my gun, okay?” She flashed a smile so I wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. “Can we go any faster, or what?”  
I tried to shuffle my feet quicker, but it was hard. Unless we are on the hunt, the undead don’t move that fast. Luckily it only took us five minutes to get back to mine, which meant she’d have five minutes to look around and five to return to The Wall.  
I am quite proud of my place, to be honest. Sure, it’s just an abandoned caravan on the side of the road, but I’ve made it my home. I even started growing plants at the front. They’re all dead now, of course, ‘cause I have no idea how to grow plants, but I tried.  
Inside is a bit of a hodge-podge of things, I suppose. The cabinets are filled with the books I’ve collected, and I have a pile of blankets and pillows that I’ve also collected, which I like to sit in while I read and think.  
I’ve never had a girl in my place before, though. (I did date one undead girl since I turned, but it wasn’t serious. We went down to Ward Seven a couple times together and that was about it.)  
This was different. There was a living girl in my home. A living girl who I fancied was in my home. I watched her look through the cabinets, intrigued.  
“You know you’re staring at me, right?” she said without looking at me.  
I averted my gaze.  
“So, how long have you been here?”  
I shrugged. I really have no idea how long it’s been. I haven’t been counting the days on a wall, or anything. I’m thinking it’s at least a few months, but it could be over a year. Your sense of time gets a little skewed when you don’t have a life.  
Speaking of sense of time, the alarm at The Wall shouldn’t have been going off yet, should it? I checked my watch. There was still a good six-and-a-half minutes before it was supposed to sound. That must have meant there was an incident and they needed to get all the living back inside quickly.  
“Oh, shit!” Rae dropped the book that was in her hands and rushed to the door of the caravan.  
I stepped in front of her. If there was an incident at The Wall it meant there were dangerous folk out there. “Not…s-safe.”  
“I have to get back to The Wall or I’ll be trapped here!”  
It would take too long for me to try to explain to her what was going on, since it takes me like a year to spit out a sentence, so I grabbed her arm to stop her.  
“Get off of me!” she said sternly, pointing her gun at my head.  
I lifted my hands in surrender and took a step back. “Not safe,” I repeated, gesturing towards the door with my head.  
She ignored me and opened the door anyway, so I followed her. I had to jerkily jog to keep up with her as she made a beeline for The Wall. I had almost caught up to her when I saw them.  
There was a small mob of undead heading towards The Wall, and all the guards were firing on them. If she got any closer she would either be eaten—like that guy on the ground over there—or shot.  
Then I noticed a couple fellas heading towards us from the right. I grabbed her arm again but she pulled it free of my grasp. (My motor skills are not great.)  
“Runnnn!”  
She turned to look at me and that must have been when she spotted them as well. She pointed her gun at them and fired. She missed both their heads and just hit one of them in the shoulder, staggering him for a moment.  
That only seemed to spurn them on and they broke into a run towards us. She fired again and grazed the other’s ear. There was no way she was going to get both of them in time before they reached her.  
I charged at them and tackled the second one to the ground, where I started bashing his head against the pavement. I heard his skull crack and kept bashing until I could see brain—this brain did not look tasty, though. I wasn’t sure how much damage I actually had to do to properly kill him, but he seemed to have stopped struggling, so I figured that must have done the trick.  
I heard another gunshot and a body fall to the ground. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the first guy had collapsed. Rae was still pointing her gun at him, looking shaken.  
I got up and shuffle-jogged over to her. I motioned with my head in the direction of the caravan and she nodded. There was still a huge kerfuffle at The Wall and it wasn’t safe for either of us over there.  
We got back to my place without attracting too much attention, and I locked the door.  
“God, I hope Izzy made it in alright,” she said, massaging her forehead with her free hand.  
I didn’t know what to say; I hoped so too. I also hoped that Archie and Chop made it out of there before the firing started.  
“Do you think they’ll send someone looking for me?”  
I looked at her and shrugged. I honestly didn’t know.  
“They probably think I’m dead, don’t they?” She sighed. “I guess I just have to hold up here a few days until The Wall opens again, yeah?”  
I nodded a little too emphatically.  
“So,” she said after a couple of minutes, tucking her gun back into her trousers. “What do you do for fun around here?”  
I shrugged again.  
“That’s a bit annoying, you know.”  
I looked down sheepishly.  
“I guess you must read, then.” She opened up one of the cupboards and pulled out a book. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a Harry Potter fan.”  
I wanted to shrug but I resisted the urge. I pretty much read anything I could find; there’s not much else to do.  
She took a seat on the bench but didn’t open the book. “You know what, Finn? You’re not what I expected at all.”  
I leaned against the inside of the caravan, too afraid to take a seat next to her.  
“Like, I’d heard rumours that you lot weren’t all as vicious as the propaganda claims, but I didn’t expect you to be, you know…”  
I stared blankly. I did not know.  
“You’re sweet, Finn.”  
If it were still physically possible, I would have blushed—so I’m glad it wasn’t possible, because that would have been embarrassing.  
“Plus, you don’t really even look dead,” she added. “I mean, you’re pale, but so am I, so… And, yeah, your clothes are a bit rough and you have dried blood on your face, which I’m going to pretend is from eating raw beef even though I know that’s not true.” She laughed nervously. “But, I think it’s your eyes. In all the propaganda the zombies—er, sorry, I know that’s not PC—the undead have pale, soulless eyes, but yours are so, I dunno… Expressive.”  
I looked away shyly.  
“I guess that’s why I came out here in the first place,” she continued. “Because I didn’t believe the propaganda. I just don’t think you can stop being human by turning, you know? We still think of our dead relatives as humans, so why not our undead ones, right?”  
I shrugged before I could stop myself.  
“Of course, that won’t stop me from shooting ‘em in the head if they come after me.” She laughed again. “Okay, this is going to sound really gross considering I just blew a guy’s brains out, but I’m a really hungry. Have you got any actual food?”  
“Uhhhh…” I went over to one of the cupboards in the kitchenette where there were a few cans of beans and a box of stale crackers from when I found the place.  
She got up and grabbed one of the cans of beans. “That’ll do, I guess.” She couldn’t find a can-opener so she pulled out a switchblade from one of her pockets and stabbed it open. This girl was armed. (Which strangely made me like her more.)  
She found a fork in one of the drawers and wiped in on her shirt. “Did you want some?” she asked, tilting the can towards me.  
I scrunched my face in disgust and she laughed. Food for the living just did not appeal to me anymore, but I don’t think cold beans would have appealed to me even when I was alive.  
She took a bite and grimaced a little. “Whatever, I can’t be picky, I guess.”  
***  
Rae and I read silently on the bench until it was too dark to read anymore. I could hardly believe she’d let me sit so close to her. She smelled really good—god, maybe I was just hungry. I hadn’t eaten in a couple of days. I would need to make a trip to Ward Seven in the morning.  
“So, do you, um, do you sleep?” Rae asked, looking at the pile of blankets and pillows.  
I shook my head.  
“Then do you mind if I…?”  
I gestured towards the pile to indicate that she was welcome to sleep there.  
She took a seat on the pile and pulled one of the blankets over herself. “So, uh, what do you do at night, then?”  
I shrugged and she rolled her eyes. “I thinnnk.” I tapped the side of my head with my finger.  
“You just sit and think in the dark?”  
I nodded.  
“Well, whatever works for ya.” She reclined into the pile. “Ugh, these blankets smell like dead bodies,” she said. “No offense.”  
I stayed seated on the bench and just watched her until it got too dark to see anything.  
I continued watching her in the morning but looked away quickly when I saw her stir. _Don’t be creepy_ , I thought to myself.  
“Morning,” she said as she turned towards me. “Have a good think?”  
Nod.  
“I did not sleep well,” she added, sitting up. “Kept having nightmares.”  
“S-sorrry,” I grumbled.  
“It’s not your fault. I should have listened to Izzy and never come here with you in the first place.”  
_But then we wouldn’t have had a chance to hang out!_  
“What’s wrong?” she asked.  
Uh-oh, I must have let my disappointment show on my face. _Do something normal! Smile! I don’t know!_ I bared my teeth in an attempt to smile and she recoiled.  
“Are you alright?”  
I nodded quickly. _God, why am I so weird?_  
“Fine, so what’s the plan for today?” she asked, getting to her feet.  
I tapped myself in the chest. “Eeeat.”  
“Do you go down to Ward Seven?” She sighed. “I guess it’s better than the alternative, but I still think that’s a sick practice. I mean, I know they’re murderers and stuff, but it’s inhumane.”  
I looked down at my worn-out trainers, embarrassed. I’m conflicted about it too, but a guy’s gotta eat, right? (Though, I’m not sure what would happen to me if I didn’t eat. I wouldn’t die, obviously, but _the hunger_ is very real. I don’t know that I could resist it forever even if I tried.)  
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” she said as she took a few steps towards me.  “Go ahead.”  
I gave her a tight nod and headed for the door.  
“Can I…” she began. “Can I come with you?”  
I shook my head. “Not…safe.”  
“Only it’s really boring and it smells in here.”  
I stared at her, completely deadpan.  
“Yeah, alright, it smells out there too,” she said. “But at least there’s a breeze and sunshine and—“  
I shook my head again and mimed eating my own arm.  
“I’ve got my gun.”  
“Too…m-many…of them.”  
She folded her arms and huffed. “Fine. Just don’t be too long.” She picked up her book off the bench and sat down. “Go on, then.”  
I left and went looking for Chop and Archie. They usually stayed in a couple abandoned cars further down the road. I was a bit concerned when I got to Archie’s car and he wasn’t there, but when I looked down towards Chop’s car I could see a pair of figures standing there and hoped it was them.  
Chop groaned as I approached.  
Was I ever relieved to see that they were alright. I patted them each on the shoulder. “Eat,” I grunted.  
They nodded and we headed off.  
We liked to get to Ward Seven fairly early before the place was picked clean. There weren’t too many offerings today, so it was a good thing we did.  
Though I thought about what Rae had said, how this was an inhumane practice, and, yeah, it kind of was. Preying on a sedated prisoner in a pen? It was sort of gross.  
I almost considered skipping this meal, but then I realized how dangerous that would be. I couldn’t go back to Rae, starving. I’ve seen what _the hunger_ can do to folks and it’s not pretty.  
(For instance, there’s this sort of unspoken rule that we don’t eat children, which is pretty easy to follow because children aren’t allowed beyond The Wall anyway. But there’s an expression, along the lines of “I’m so hungry I could eat a child,” which sort of encapsulates what the hunger is like. It’ll make you do things you wouldn’t otherwise.)  
The lads had already picked out their target, so I helped them catch and dismember him. Oh, god, I was covered in blood. Rae was not going to be impressed.  
On our way back, I stopped to clean off my hands and face in a puddle of water. Archie gave me a look like, “Who are you trying to impress?” I shrugged at him and wiped my face with the sleeve of my plaid shirt to dry it off.  
“Girrrl?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.  
I rolled my head back in defeat then nodded. “Raaae.”  
Chop smacked me with the back of his hand and laughed wheezily. I shoved him back. “Finn… G-girlfriend,” he croaked, still laughing.  
“Sshut…uppp.”  
Archie gestured with his head, asking me if I wanted to go with them to the old town center, but I declined. Normally I liked to go with them and peruse the broken shops that had been looted and look for anything that had been left behind—that’s where I got most of my books—but I just wanted to get back and see Rae.  
I tried to open the caravan door when I got there but it was locked. I banged on it a few times.  
“Who’s there?” Rae asked defensively from inside.  
“Urrrrrrrg,” I groaned.  
“Finn?” She came to the window and I could see she had her gun in hand. She squinted at me for a moment before letting me in. “Just had to be safe,” she said.  
I nodded and climbed inside, locking the door behind me just in case. This was a fairly dead area—no pun intended—so I wasn’t too worried about anyone stopping by but, again, have to be safe.  
“So,” she said, leaning against a cabinet. “I am really bored.”  
I shrugged apologetically before I got an idea. I nudged her out of the way so I could get to the cabinet behind her and rummaged through until I found a deck of cards. Now I could finally play something other than Solitaire.  
We played card games for a couple of hours until even that got boring and we switched back to reading. She and I sat up front in the driver and passenger seats, respectively.  
“Does this thing drive?” she asked after several minutes.  
I shook my head. I’d tried to move it when I first found it, but it was out of gas. Where would I even go, anyway?  
“That’s too bad.” She opened her book and closed it again. “Is this really all you do with your time? Play card games and read books and think in the dark?”  
Shrug.  
“I feel sorry for ya, I do.” She leaned back in her seat and looked over at me. “Can I ask you some questions?”  
Shrug.  
“Do you remember what happened to ya? Like, how did you end up…the way you are?”  
I shook my head and shrugged at the same time.  
“You don’t know. Okay. What about your life before you…turned?”  
Shrug.  
“You don’t know anything about yourself?”  
I thought for a moment then looked down at my t-shirt. I tugged on it, looking back at her.  
“You like the Arctic Monkeys, I guess?”  
Nod/shrug.  
“Well that’s…something.” She readjusted and turned in her seat so she was facing me more directly. “So, can I ask, why is it that you don’t want to eat me? Or do you, but you’re just being polite?” I was about to shrug when she added, “And don’t just shrug!”  
I contemplated my answer. “Inn…ocent,” I said, pointing at her.  
“Come on, everyone’s guilty of something. I’m no angel.” She laughed. “If I had killed someone, would you eat me? I mean, I sort of did, yesterday, didn’t I?”  
“I—I wouldn’t,” I replied, shaking my head.  
“Why not? I mean, look at me, I could feed you for days,” she joked.  
“You’re… You’re pretty.” Oh, man, why did I say that? I sounded like such a creeper.  
“What?”  
I looked away, embarrassed.  
“Did you say that you wouldn’t eat me because I’m pretty?” she asked. “That is the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard!”  
Okay, not the reaction I was expecting.  
“Is this some sort of misogynistic thing where you won’t eat women?”  
I frowned at her. Why would it be misogynistic to not eat women? That wasn’t even the case anyway. (Sure, most of the offerings at Ward Seven were male, but I’ve had the occasional female. No difference, really.)  
“Alright, sorry, it’s just… Do you really think I’m pretty?”  
Small nod.  
“That’s weird, though.”  
I tilted my head to the side. “Whyyy?”  
“Because we’re like completely different—okay, not different species. We’re both still human, yeah? But, I mean, can you even fancy someone if you’re undead?”  
Shrug. (It must be possible, because I do.)  
“This whole situation is just weird,” she said as she rubbed her eyes. “I am trapped, in an immobile caravan, with a zom—sorry—an undead guy, who thinks I’m pretty. Yeah, that’s a scenario I never imagined myself in. It sounds like the premise of a really bad romantic comedy.”  
“Sorry,” I grumbled.  
“Stop apologizing, it’s not your fault.”  
“Sor—“  
“I mean it,” she snapped.  
I slouched down in my seat.  
“Look, it’s getting late,” she said more softly. “I should get some sleep. I’m exhausted from doing absolutely nothing all day.” She smiled and got up to head to the back of the caravan where the pile of blankets was.  
“Good…night.”  
***  
The next day was more of the same. We played cards and read books and did that twenty questions game for a while. (I was really bad at it because I couldn’t quite visualize if some things were bigger or smaller than a breadbox.) (It depends on the size of the breadbox!)  
“Do you have any other games we could play?” Rae asked as we sat in the front seats again.  
I shook my head.  
“We can’t even do a drinking game because we don’t have anything to drink,” she added jokingly. “Can you drink? I don’t even know.”  
I shrugged.  
“Right. Well. Since I got to ask you questions last night, how about you ask me some questions tonight,” she suggested. “Get to know each other a little better while I’m here.”  
I nodded and thought about my first question. “Family?”  
“I’ve got a mum, a stepdad, and a baby sister.”  
“Friends?”  
“I mostly just hang out with Izzy and Chloe, who you’ve met.”  
“B-boyfriend?”  
“Uh, no, not at the moment.” She laughed. “You interested?”  
I looked down at my hands uncomfortably.  
“Finn, are you… Are you blushing?”  
I reached my hand up and touched my face. It felt slightly warm. That was strange.  
“That’s not…possible…is it?” she said.  
When I looked up at her she was staring at me intently.  
“Maybe your face just looks redder in the sunset…?” She squinted at me. “May I?” she added as she leaned over and reached her hand towards my face.  
I nodded and she brushed my cheek with the back of her fingers.  
“Whoa, you’re—well, you’re cold, but not as cold as I was expecting,” she said, picking up my hand with hers. “You’re like just-been-outside cold, not been-dead-for-a-year cold.”  
I didn’t know if this was normal or not. I’ve never had a living person touch me before—at least not since I turned—so I had nothing to compare myself to. She felt warmer than I did, for sure, but not as much as I was expecting. It was kind of nice to be holding her hand, anyway…  
But then she let go and sat back in her seat. “Are all you lot like that?”  
“I…dunno.”  
“Maybe once I’m back inside I can get a doctor to come out and see ya,” she said. “D’you ever see doctors out here?”  
“I don’t…think so.” I surprised myself by yawning all of a sudden. I hadn’t realized before but I felt _tired_.  
“Are you alright?” Rae asked.  
I nodded but yawned again.  
“Do you need to lie down?”  
“Don’t…sleep.”  
“When was the last time you tried?”  
I pondered for a minute. I suppose I hadn’t tried to sleep since shortly after I turned and realized I couldn’t, but my eyelids were feeling heavy in a way they hadn’t before and my brain was having trouble focusing.  
“Maybe you should lie down,” she said. She stood up and held onto my hand again, leading me to the back of the caravan where she pulled out a blanket and pillow from the pile and set them on the floor by her feet. “Try and rest a bit, yeah?”  
I nodded and got down on the floor, lying on top of the blanket, while she got into the pile again.  
“Goodnight,” she said.  
“Night.”  
I don’t know what happened, but I started having these random thoughts and images in my head, like I wasn’t in the caravan anymore. I also felt really cold. I never got cold.  
I opened my eyes and could barely make out the interior of the caravan in the light of the moon coming through the windows. I pulled the blanket out from under me and wrapped it around myself, but I was still cold. I tried curling up in a ball, but that didn’t help much.  
“Finn?” said Rae. She must have noticed me moving around. “Is everything okay?”  
“C-cold,” I said.  
“You’re cold?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Me too,” she said. “Come here, we can double up the blankets.”  
I hesitated for a moment before crawling up next to her, dragging my blanket along the ground. She grabbed it and layered it with hers before draping them over both of us.  
There wasn’t a lot of room so I had to lie right up against her. God, she was so warm and soft. It was nice.  
“Now don’t get any funny ideas,” she said as she turned away from me.  
As much as I wanted to just put my arm around her and absorb all her heat, I turned the other way as well so we were back to back.  
Again, I started having strange thoughts and images in my mind for I don’t know how long. It seemed like it was quite a while at the time, but it felt like nothing once I opened my eyes when I heard Rae say my name.  
“Finn. Can you let go of me, please?” she said.  
I realized I was now on my side facing her with my arm around her middle. “Sorry,” I muttered, moving my arm away.  
She rolled over to face me, but we were so close that she bumped up against me. Oh, shit, that wasn’t—that couldn’t be—  
“Finn…do you have my gun?” she asked slowly.  
“No…”  
She raised an eyebrow. “Then what was that I felt on my hip?”  
“Sorry,” I repeated, trying to hide my face in the pillow.  
“Okay, but that’s weird.”  
“I know… I’m sorry!”  
“No, I mean, don’t you need, you know…blood-flow for that?” She lifted the blankets and looked down for a moment. “I thought your heart didn’t work, so what’s pumping your blood?”  
“I…don’t know…” I was growing concerned.  
“And you’re, like, pink,” she added, looking at my face. She placed her hand on my chest and her eyes went wide. “Holy shit, Finn! I can feel your heartbeat!”  
I could feel it now, too, and it was racing.  
“Has this happened to you before?”  
“No,” I said. My throat felt dry, so it came out a bit hoarse.  
“We really need to get you to a doctor.” Her hand trailed down my abdomen before she lifted it away.  
Jesus Fucking Christ. I wanted her so badly, in a way I’d never wanted a person before. (At least not in my undead lifetime.) I had the overwhelming urge to put my mouth on her, but not because I wanted to eat her, not literally. Figuratively, I wanted to consume her, devour her, ravage her.  
And she was staring at me. Why was she staring at me? Was there something on my face?  
She lifted her hand and placed it on my cheek. “You’re even warmer than last night,” she said.  
I felt like I was burning up. I would have cast the blankets off, but I didn’t want to _draw attention_ to the fact that I was still _at attention_.  
“Finn,” she whispered, still staring at me. “What are you?”  
“I…I don’t…know…” I trailed off as our faces drew nearer. I wasn’t sure which one of us was moving towards the other—maybe we both were—but soon we were just centimetres apart, our mouths hovering in the air as we evaluated the space between us, before determining that it was unbearable.  
Her lips felt on fire compared to mine—I guess I was still relatively cold—but it was nice.  
“Wait, what am I doing?” she said, pushing me away. “This is ridiculous; you’re a fucking zombie—no offense.”  
“What?”  
“I mean, aren’t you?”  
I nodded hesitantly.  
“So we can’t…” She sat up so I did as well. “Ugh, this is so weird.”  
“Why…is it weird?” I asked.  
“You are undead.” She spoke slowly. “I am living. Do you not see a problem here?”  
I stared vacantly at her.  
“It wouldn’t work! You can’t even—“ She looked down again and I covered my lap with more blankets. “How is this even possible?”  
“I don’t…understand…either.”  
She picked up my left hand to look at my watch. “The Wall opens in less than an hour, so we’ll get you down there and see if we can get you inside to see a doctor, right?”  
“Alright…”  
“You’re gonna be fine, yeah?” She gave me a sympathetic look. She must have been able to tell that I was scared. “C’m’ere,” she said, reaching out to hug me. “You’re gonna be fine.”  
***  
We left the caravan when we heard the alarm sound, Rae with her gun in hand. We walked quickly towards The Wall—I could walk much quicker now—but didn’t break into a run for fear of drawing too much attention. (Besides, if you run up to The Wall, you’re likely to get shot.)  
We stayed beyond the line, looking for Izzy. I was worried for a minute that she wouldn’t show up, but then we spotted her. She wasn’t in her usual location.  
She must have spotted us as well because she started running towards us. Her guard raised her weapon at us.  
“Rae!” Izzy said as she approached us, but didn’t cross the line. “Are you alright?”  
“Yeah, I’m fine, I haven’t turned or anything,” said Rae. “But I think we need to take Finn inside to see a doctor.”  
“What? Why?”  
“I think he’s healing!”  
Izzy glanced at me and I looked away shyly.  
Rae grabbed my hand. “He’s got a heartbeat and his blood is pumping and he sleeps! I think he’s turning back!”  
“But how?”  
“Look, I don’t know how it’s happened or what exactly has happened, but trust me, he’s changing.”  
Izzy looked at me expectantly.  
“I…I don’t know…how…but it’s true.”  
“Whoa,” she said. “That was, like, a sentence.”  
“I told ya!” said Rae. “We need to find out what’s going on, because if he can change then maybe there is a cure.”  
“Okay, okay,” said Izzy. “Hold on.” She jogged back towards the entrance at The Wall to talk to some people, while her guard stayed with us.  
It was several minutes before she returned, with three more armed guards. They grabbed hold of both me and Rae, pointing their weapons at our heads, and walked us towards the entrance.  
“Hey, what’s going on?” said Rae.  
“They’ve got to get you both checked out by a doctor to determine if you’re living or not,” Izzy said. “Just to be safe.”  
“This is bollocks.”  
“I know, but it’s procedure.” She frowned sympathetically.  
We were led through The Wall, which was much deeper than I was expecting; it was the width of a two-lane street, at least. When we got to the other side, I was surprised to see that the level of squalor was similar to the undead side. I thought it would be so much nicer over here.  
We were shoved in the back of a van and driven somewhere—I couldn’t tell where we were going because there were no windows back here. But Rae held onto my hand and told me everything would be fine.  
Once we’d finally stopped, we were let out and escorted into a run-down building that appeared to be a makeshift hospital. We didn’t have to wait in the waiting room, though—I think they were worried about leaving potential “zombies” in a room with sick people.  
They took us into separate rooms, which made me nervous. Mostly I wanted to know that Rae would be alright. I mean, of course she would be, she was definitely living, but still. I worried.  
I worried about myself, too. What if they determined that I was still undead and sent me back out beyond the wall where some of the less honourable undead folks would smell my blood and try to eat me? Oh, god.  
After a good forty minutes, a doctor came to see me. I was glad to see she didn’t seem afraid of me—I was so tired of the living being afraid of me.  
“You can put that away,” she told the guard, nodding at the gun in his hand.  
He lowered it slowly. I felt like I could breathe again. (Hey, I was breathing, too—that was a good sign!)  
The doctor examined me and did a few small tests, and determined that I seemed alive, but she’d have to do a brain scan to tell if I was still infected, and that would take a few hours to get set up.  
They left me locked in the room by myself. I was starting to get hungry—but it wasn’t _the hunger_. Just, like, craving a pizza hungry.  
For the scan I was made to lie on a table while my head was inserted into this weird machine. It was kind of scary. Afterwards, the doctor told me that she could see where there had been damage from the infection, but that I seemed to be healing.  
“Based on my observations,” she said as I sat in her office, “I’d have to classify you as living.”  
I laughed out of relief. “Can I go…see Rae, now?”  
“Hold on, I’ve got some questions.” She flipped open a folder on her desk. “Do you have any idea how this change occurred?”  
“I’ve no idea,” I said, shaking my head.  
“Has anything happened to you recently? Anything different?”  
I tried to think for a minute. Things had been pretty ordinary lately, except for… _Rae_.  
***  
“Rae!” I said when I was finally allowed to see her.  
She threw her arms around me. “Finn! You’re alright!”  
“I’m more than alright, I’m fucking alive,” I said, resting my head on her shoulder.  
“So am I,” she laughed. “But I am so glad to see you. I was so scared when they separated us.”  
“Me too.”  
I lifted my head to look at her and she kissed me.  
“What?” she said quietly when she pulled her head back. “It’s not weird now that you’re definitely alive, right?”  
***  
Now I volunteer with the undead outreach program. We’re less about bringing them raw beef and more about bringing them live human contact. We shake their hands and give them hugs and just talk to them like they’re people, the way Rae did with me.  
Chop and Archie have both _returned_ , as we say, and volunteer as well, along with several others. We’re trying to get the program sanctioned by the government, but it takes time to get things done, so in the meantime we’re doing it ourselves.  
Yes, Ward Seven is still open for now, and Ward Four still has an issue with daredevils, though we’re working on spreading this outreach program to the other wards in the future.  
Not everyone is keen on it, of course. Some think that once you turn you can’t change back, but I figure I’m living proof that you can.  
As for Rae and me, let’s just say we’re both happy to be alive. Together.


End file.
